


Interval

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Not Beta Read, meta-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 01:20:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is proud of the choices she made. Probably, he wants to hear her say she chose him.<br/>As usual, he gets more than he bargained for.</p><p>(Cut scene from Like a sudden rush of water through your heart and lungs.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interval

'I am grateful,' he says that night, as they are folded together on the threshold of the ship, soaring high above the mountains.

Her head jerks up from his chest, curls bouncing in the satellite light.

'Grateful for what?'

'For not turning me away. I never realised it would be that hard for you to choose me. I just thought 'Oh well, another one of those starry-eyed young things, except she manages to stick around for a little longer’. No offence, but you are older than my other companions, save Romana. But you choose, all the way, not to kill me, not to mistrust me, not to follow me. I always thought the people I travel with do so because of a natural tendency. They do not choose me. I've never chosen the company I keep; they followed me as they would follow their intuition.’

She turns away from the starry night to face him and tucks his arms tighter around her, overly wriggling against him before answering with mockery.

'You're saying that when it's obvious they follow you as if you were a cult.'

'I’m actually trying to be serious here,’ he whispers in her hair and lets his head rest on her shoulder as he settles her against himself, his feet dangling in the air.

‘You’re right, you know. In the end, probably. Never at the beginning. That's why they eventually get to make a choice between me and life. But you are the one who really chose me. Right at the start. So much you had to rebel against. Inasmuch as I never know where your heart lies, if the adventures we have together you barely allow to happen or freely embrace.'

His mood is light, disposed to complete sincerity tonight. To hear her talk, truly, about herself and to drink in would provide him with enough strength to have him say the words she deserves to hear.

Reading her is the only form of communication he is allowed to.

He's perusing her face, her old and new face, looking for a hint of that gleam he saw in Amy's, Sarah Jane's, Susan's eyes, that light begging 'Show me the stars, dream maker.' It is what binds them together. It is strong, he knows it and he trusts that gleam. He is used to it.

The only thing he is finding here is a confident layer, a well-tried love, worn on her face like women wear their wedding ring. She would put up with his worst.

And best.

'I choose you all the time. Certainly I freely embrace!’ she roars and greedily kisses him, the Doctor so surprised he loosens his grip on her waist. For a second he fears she might fall to her death. Well, not to her death but to another few seconds older TARDIS with a few seconds older Doctor who would not fail to catch her.

As always.

Oblivious to his pondering on ubiquity and gravity, she releases him and catches her breath, casually picking up where she left off as if nothing had happened. River and heights, he rolls his eyes.

‘Were you a deluded daft old man in a scrapyard, with nothing but his deluded daft old mind to gallivant around the Universe, I would still choose you.'

He receives her words like a blow. Such decisiveness and size in her love. He doesn’t deserve it.

Her declarations of love are most uncommon, he must grant her that.

'It's easy to say for you. Because you know what I would be in another Universe,' he sneers.

She glances up, regally serious. It’s very difficult to sneer at her when she is that radiant in the satellite light.

'That's the difference between you and me, dear. I acknowledge your alternative selves. Had I been born good old Melody Williams, not fashioned after you to be your killer, you wouldn't have looked at me twice. You would have been jealous of me and my keeping the parents settled.'

'That's really unfair. There's another universe in which I am no better than Davros and one in which I married the Master.’ He pauses, wistful.

How silly of him. She is aware of that. Never marry someone who has written a thesis on you. Or can feel time streams as well as you do. Or has Scottish blood. That’s another story. He shakes his head, annoyed by his own drifting.

‘No really, I can't expect you to love every version of me, you can't expect me to.'

'Ah. Remember. I'm not human, I'm not a time lord. I'm not even a good guy.' He can hear her adding, for herself, how pleased she is with that trait. Keeping him on his toes, unpredictable mischief manager, she prides herself on being able to surprise him after all this time in his company. Better, to surprise him after all the fantastic people, beings, and planets he encountered.

Because there is none in the Universe like River Song.

Though, he wonders. Does she see her uniqueness as a result of her physiological and genetic peculiarities? How long the way before she becomes that woman in the Library.

Don’t.

So close, she may sense it.

He hugs her tighter, setting his chin firmly in the dip of her collarbone. She turns her head to find his face, her nose picking at his cheek and lips.

He heaves a sigh of relief.

She has still so much to learn.

'It's still _your_ choice. When you are with me, when you are not with me.'

'Yes and every choice I make I do because there's at least one of us who cares about the safety of the last time lord.' She’s still taunting him, baiting him with her full lips, refusing to meet his mouth.

He grunts in displeasure. So much for serious talk.

'I'm safe with you.'

'I'm a psychopath.' It pains him to hear those words. Even if in jest.

'No, you're really not,' he counters with a saucy grin equal to her.

'I wouldn't bet your life on it.'

'Oh, I did. Twice. Each time the kiss was worth the death.'

It is only banter. After all.

That is disquieting, to think that perhaps _this_ would never change. They would banter their way out of every serious conversation. And never talk.

He pauses, half set on phrasing correctly what he wants to say, half set on blowing a curl from her face. The conversation has a tendency to go awfully astray with her and his mind is genuinely concerned with discussing the matter of her free will. He feels she needs it.

'Is it because you're a child of the TARDIS, that you are the way you are around me, around every me? I doubt anybody can be that way around me except the TARDIS.'

Wrong, he instantly notes. He cannot separate her from what she is. Still a long way to go for him as well before he learns to be the man she loved back there.

Don’t.

'She loves you more than any of us. She stole you after all; your oldest companion, the one you'll never leave.'

'You're quite privileged yourself, Doctor Song, she won't forget you. You don't forget the one who shoots you.'

'Oh, there will come a day when you need power and you'll just jettison my room. That's all. You've done it before. It won't hurt a bit.'

'Don't.' That’s not the way he intended the conversation to go. Not at all.

'Sweetie, the thing about suffering is that with time you forget. It would be painful for the departed, who anyway can't feel it, but it will let you live.'

'Why do you talk like you are one of them?’ he bites back, not missing a beat. Stop, he soundlessly pleads. No more wit games.

'Because, technically, I am.' He recoils in horror, half dumb from panic as he fears she might have discovered about her death – largest library in the Universe and an archaeology team lost to save 4022 people, of course it has been documented.

'Don't look at me like that. I am dead and so are you. To a time traveller, everything is always dead and alive. He is no exception. You are aware there is a corner of the Universe where my body lies, killed, by very nasty creatures I hope, never to rise again?'

Banter. Again. Stop joking about death. Mine. Yours.

He ran for two hundred years before his own. He knows he will before hers.

Already is running.

Of course he knows, he lives a life full of last days, where the phantom of his past self constantly runs into his future self.

But she is wrong. He buries his face in her flank, dragging the utter despair he carries and cradling it in his chest so that she won't read, when he will be constantly reminded that there is no such corpse. Never. Nowhere.

That her body burnt and her memories are left buzzing inside a ghost library, slowly decaying as the data core fails.

‘Oh, Sweetie,’ she sooths him, warming him as only she can, wholly, body and mind. Vainly also.

 _No trace, River._ He rocks with her now, forgetting they are still in equilibrium above empty space.

_And that, you didn’t choose._

_And that, you didn’t teach me well enough._

**Author's Note:**

> I cut it very early in the writing process because it was unexpectedly angsty for the end of the fic. Also because this River seemed older than the one in the quarry. So I decided to work on the scene and recut it into a standalone piece.


End file.
